Astro for the month ahead

We're closing September of the Harvest Moon season with that time, as October fast approaches. October is a month of amazing astronomical events, especially on clear nights. The full moon of October is referred to as the Hunter's Moon. We'll be seeing the full moon on the 24th October. A link to the different phases are here: Moon Phase Calender 12.com
It's also when to expect some awesome meteor showers. This will be on the 8th, 21st and the 22nd October 2018. The meteor shower on the 8th is the Draconids or Giaconids, while the 21st and 22nd meteor showers are the Orionids. We'll anticipate more meteor showers following October as well but there is much excitement for the coming star shows.
Howls ^^   

Crazy spider season!

It must be said that Autumn is a time for spiders!
Yes that again. The least favourite thing about Autumn. Those creepy things have spun webs all around the garden and indoors! Many people try and put off spiders with putting conkers and nuts around the house, which is said to frighten spiders. That is just an old wives tale because spiders don't have any fears of conkers and nuts. What they don't like are peppermint sprays and noise. Dogs and cats often chase spiders away. It's long been believed that spiders are a lucky charm and they foretell a future with money.
Killing spiders has been considered very bad luck. Beliefs that spiders linked to prosperity, wealth and fortune is ancient as the hills. It was said that seeing a spider climbing up a wall can be magical, you need to say a wish and it will come true. Spiders that have made webs in the morning will bring nice weather. Spinning webs across your front door will invite friendships into your life. A spider put inside a walnut shell and then worn as a pendant can protect against plague. A spider on a wedding dress is a positive sign of happiness. Oh yuck. All of those beliefs are still recognised as truth! 
Basically most of us don't want any spiders indoors. Good fortune or no good fortune, they're not welcome here. Myth busting facts about spideeeeees. http://www.burkemuseum.org/blog/curated/spider-myths
Howls ^^

Down a Dark Hall

As part of Back To School season, I shall make a review of the film "Down a Dark Hall". This is a 2018 horror, directed by Rodrigo Cortes and starring Uma Thurman, AnnaSophia Robb, Johdi May and Pip Torrens. The film is based on the 1974 novel "Down a Dark Hall" by Lois Duncan.
A problem teenage girl named Kit is on medication but still has major issues. She's sent to Blackwood Boarding School by her mother to get help. A reluctant and unwilling Kit ends up inside a vast gloomy school with just no other students yet, except her. When the others arrive the following day, Kit is surprised to know that there is just a few other students. The headmistress Madame Duret is very strict and keeps their phones, making sure they have only limited use of them to make calls. Besides the imposing and Edwardian appearance of the head, there is the unfriendly yet super strong Mrs Olonsky, the cold Professor Farley, the pianist tutor, who is son of Duret and the nice Dr Heather Sinclair. Kit finds that each of the students are possessed and so is she, while a section of the school is off limits. There are strange goings on.
While this film is very dark, with spooky moments and gets off with some jump scares, it doesn't have much gore. The film isn't about blood and guts, as it's a supernatural chill type of horror. Some of the landscape views of the outdoor forests shrouded in mist is gorgeous. The scene cuts that might be down to Kit's own hallucinations are a bit confusing to be honest.
I rate this film a 4/10.
Most eager anticipated section: Zombies.
Howls ^^

Tiny scarecrow creep

It's September and harvest season so that brings me to talk about a creepy scarecrow. In 2005 there was a reported sighting of a cryptid that looked like a tiny scarecrow. This happened in the farming village of Huay Nam Rak, Chaing Rai province in Thailand. The picturesque countryside around the small village has luscious trees, flowers, crops and veggie patches. On one sunny morning of 31st August 2005, a farmer named Ti Kitkangbon had something moving across his fields of lemongrass and rice that was witnessed by several people. The first to see it was a cyclist named Sawaeng Bunratchasak, who said that it was between 8 and 8.30 a.m. that he saw a little figure, which he first assumed was a scarecrow but it was moving over a ridge and through the fields. The creature noticed the cyclist and turned to stare at him with glowing red eyes. Bunratchasak was scared, as he knew it wasn't a scarecrow at all but a living creature of some type. He informed people in the village of what he saw. More people went into the field and saw the creature for themselves. It was described as "70cm high", yellow in colour, a large head with big ears and big red eyes. The creature was able to float and appeared unafraid of the humans.
It was an encounter that attracted the police and media. It was soon believed that the villagers had seen a balloon in the shape of a doll that floated there from another village. Also others claim that a storm carried off a load of scarecrows and that the people of the village were seeing only one of the wind blown scarecrows. None of these scaptical views take into consideration that the people living in the village have seen the creature alive and have features that the scarecrows and balloon didn't have.
Taiwan is full of myths and legends about mysterious creatures that include the mô-sîn-á who are the goblins, fae and other "little people" creatures. Could one of those creatures have been seen at the village of Huay Nam Rak? It could've been.
Howls ^^   

Tamara

Karma is a witch.
Tamara is a 2005 horror film directed by Jeremy Raft, starring Jenna Dewan, Chad Faust, Matthew Marsden and Claudette Mink. This is part of Back to School season with a horror flick set at school.
Tamara is a shy schoolgirl who writes for the school paper, when her latest article just lost her reputation. Not only didn't she have friends to begin with but she caused aggro by reporting on the popular sports aces as having been on drugs. This girl isn't all as it seems though and isn't just a shy girl at all. She's a witch. And has a major crush on her favourite teacher, Mr Natolly. Tamara is happy when a call is made and it's her teacher inviting her to visit him at a motel. Little does she know this is all a set up. Her classmates think it's funny to get back at her for writing about them. It went horribly wrong though, and Tamara ended up dead and buried by her classmates. Soon she turns up in school as seductive and risen from the grave, with powers of teleportation and hypnosis. Her classmates are confused and stupid. She could easily control people just by touching them. A former friend stumbles across her book of spells and wants to reverse the magic to stop Tamara going too far. Already people have been brutally killed.
Tamara is a hybrid of "Carrie," "The Craft" and "Frankenstein Created Woman" movies. Carrie because it's about school bullying. The Craft because it uses witchcraft. Frankenstein Created Woman because of the shy girl teased by others who died and came back from the dead as beautiful and vengeful.
I rate this film a 6/10.
The most gruesome part of all was what a student did to himself with a knife.
Howls ^^

Scary schools

It's Back to School season. For that I shall post about creepy schools. There are countless haunted schools everywhere so I will mention them.
Anteneo de Manila is a university in the Phillipines filled with ghosts and mysterious creatures. Although it's just over 150 years old, once run by jesuit priests, then used by Japanese soldiers during WWII. It's now full of sudents there to learn and study. Many experienced paranormal activities while there.
St Andrews University in Scotland is extremely haunted. The university is a Medieval place founded in 1413 that looks like a creepy castle. The ghosts haunting the university include: "Archbishops, Martyrs, Royals, White Ladies, Green Ladies, Grey Ladies, Blue Ladies, Phantom Monks and fishermen. A doppelganger, a phantom car, a ghost ship, mysterious skulls, a floating head, ghostly golfers, a phantom coach trundling the streets in the early hours, ghostly figures in black, an array of classical hauntings and an abundance of poltergeist activity to force the mind into admitting their reality". [sic].
Next is G-Burg or Gettysburg College, a beautiful school filled with hauntings. It was founded in the early 19th Century. The ghosts are often experienced by those at the college. Ghosts tend to be from the American Civil War era but there are other anomolies and strange goings on that could be felt and heard. More follow link.
Another spooky school with a Civil War background is the University of Alabama. Founded in 1831, it claims hauntings in and around the campus including the library. The university has a popular football team and it's own museum featuring dinosaur bones. Ghosts of civil war era soldiers haunt the location are well known. There is also a negative energy because of deaths that have happened there. Students have felt threatened and under attack by supernatural forces.
Before there was a university, there was a medical school that was mostly destroyed by an atomic explosion that claimed the lives of about 800 students and staff. It was about 600 metres away from the blast. Then Nagasaki University in Japan was made in 1949 and yet it's haunted with mysterious screams, crying and smells of burning flesh.
University of Cambridge in England was founded in 1231. Resembling a giant fortress, the university is extremely haunted. The whole of Cambridge is haunted. It's said to be haunted by famous characters like Oliver Cromwell and King Charles I. There are special ghost hunts and ghost tours going on there.
There is just too many creepy haunted schools.
You can read about others if you go to the following links:
https://listverse.com/2012/11/25/10-seriously-creepy-college-hauntings/
https://paranormal.lovetoknow.com/Haunted_Schools
Howls ^^

Video of a dire wolf

There is a video circulating around the internet, showing a very big wolflike animal chasing a domestic dog. Many newspaper articles, (such as Daily Mail and The Sun), as well as numerous Youtube links posted the video and found the creature "mysterious". They're not calling the animal a common grey wolf or a timber wolf but instead called it a "Dire Wolf". Such a creature as the Dire Wolf became extinct roughly 12,700 YBP.
Also to add to the speculations already, it's said that the animal is a dogman cryptid. A dogman is a type of werewolf or wolflike creature with the body like a human or almost humanlike, but the head of a dog or a wolf, depending on the sources, witnesses and reports. Some dogmen are known to move on all fours like a regular wolf but most are bipedal, which is what many people have seen happen. That video footage reveals a half hidden animal, that gives chase to a barking dog, while the man filming the clip yells "Hey!" at the end just before you hear the dog shriek when it's close to the wolf. I shall call it a wolf for now, but there are many things about it that doesn't add up.
First of all, the video isn't really that long and pretty grainy to begin to examine. The dog appears small by comparison to this big wolf, but the dog itself is not a large breed of dog either.
The original uploader had cut most of the film. What we see is a shortened part. The original was showing the dog being attacked, but soon someone fired a shotgun in the air to frighten off the wolf. The dog survived with a few scratches. Now this is the story behind the video:
https://www.strangerdimensions.com/2018/06/16/monstrous-wolf-chases-dog-in-northern-saskatchewan/
According to the page that I included in the link above, "Monstrous wolf chases dog in northern Saskatchewan" at Stranger Dimensions, the creature appeared around that location for about a week, so the man decided to go out and film it. The man is a fishing guide, with his dog named Skipper. The dog Skipper became frantic and barked at the wolf. Skipper was then hurled into the air by the wolf. Another fishing guide shoots with a gun to scare away the wolf.
The author of the article at Stranger Dimensions smugly wrote at the end: "So there you have it. It’s always interesting to see how stories shapeshift over the years, don’t you think?" Okay, the writer seems happy that the wolf turned out to be what they think is none other than a regular wolf and not a dire wolf, dogman or a werewolf. But that wolf in the video is NOT a regular common wolf. The wolf as described in the True Story at Sascatchewan is NOT a regular common wolf either.
Clues in the article that show how this couldn't have been a common wolf:

1. "The wolf had already been appearing in the area over the previous week. At first, it ran away at the sight of the camera, but later returned".
2. "Immediately, one of the other guides fired a shotgun into the air, and the giant wolf retreated... it did return a few more times..."

Now let me quickly tell you something about common wolves. According to scientific research of Kananaskis Country, wolves have changed their patterns to avoid humans (link to article posted below).Websites on biology, animals and wolves specifically inform the public that wolves are afraid of humans and avoid going near human places. 
The wolf in that video has been lingering around the site for a week. Even after gunshots were fired to shoo the wolf away, it returned "a few more times". People can say that it was after the dog. That in itself is still unique and strange because the dog is surrounded by humans and that wolf didn't kill the dog, but roughed it up.Wolves have been caught on tape at night dragging away dogs, although there hasn't been any humans in sight. Wolves are often masters of stealth.
What also stands out in that quote above is that the wolf disliked the camera. This must be said that supernatural creatures such as Bigfoot hate being filmed. Most animals don't like the flash of cameras but neither do some people. That camera doesn't seem to be using any flash photography or does it seem to be an old fashioned camcorder with noise and movements. It looks as if the film was made by a small device. Often wolves are curious about cameras and sniff them.   
Another very different event of a wolf approaching a dog ended up with a magical story as this one: What Happens When A Wild Wolf Approaches A Dog Common wolves such as the grey wolf and timber wolf have a bad reputation anyway and they're on the endangered species list. 
That wolf in the video chasing Skipper has been a very persistent wolf. It kept stalking and then returned to the site. It's very large in size and powerful enough to fling a dog up into the air, while humans watched! That wolf in the video was too close to the people, as wolves usually avoid people anyway. It's not scared of humans.The wolf didn't like the camera and was more afraid of it than it was afraid of the humans. This creature didn't behave normal for what we know of common wolves. This is about all I will say for now.  
Here are some of the links:
Video of Huge wolf attacking dog
The Daily Mail story
The Sun article
Kananaskis study shows wolves adjust habits to avoid humans 
Western Wildlife on wolves 
Howls^^